Jack Canon's American Destiny

Broken Pieces

Friday, December 19, 2014

Do you read fantasy? Which kind? Back when I started reading
fantasy—just before the invention of the printing press—fantasy was all
wizards with staffs and cloaks, kids with magical objects that allowed
them to fly to the moon, or crazy professors making trips to the center
of the Earth. I don't recall there being separate sub-genres. If there
were, the librarian didn't tell me about them.

I just
have to ask—why urban? I mean, isn't that a tad discriminatory? Is an
urban setting somehow superior to a suburban setting? No witchcraft
going on behind those perfectly trimmed hedges? No summoning of demons
from the sinkhole that's just opened in the back yard?

Don't
get me started on rural settings! No one thinks it would be amusing if
the shape-shifter hero morphed into a dairy cow to blend into the herd
or gored the baddie to death? No possessed pocket gophers taking over
the town? If pocket gophers aren't a creation of the Devil, I don't know
what is!

When I wrote Touching Madness and published
it, retail sites insisted I classify it according to their prescribed
list of genres. Because it involves traveling to alternate realities, it
might fit the fantasy alternate histories category. But it's not about a
single alternate reality.

Touching Madness isn't epic,
sword-and-sorcery, or steampunk. It's sort of urban fantasy. But it
isn't strictly confined to an urban environment. While River spends most
of the book in Centerville, Kansas, important chapters see him in a
Raptor military camp, snowy winter woods, and an underground compound of
unknown origins.

So in keeping with current trends,
I'm proposing a new category: contemporary,
alternate-dimension-hopping-magic-advanced-technology-and-demons
fantasy. What do you think? Will it catch on at Amazon?

Light
bulbs talk to River Madden; God doesn't. When the homeless
schizophrenic unintentionally fractures a dimensional barrier and
accidentally steals a gym bag containing a million dollars, everyone
from the multiverse police to the local crime boss—and an eight-foot
tall demon—are after him. Can he dodge them long enough to correct his
mistakes and prevent the destruction of three separate dimensions? If he
succeeds, will the light bulbs stop singing off-key?